Tag Archives: remarketing

How to retarget and remarket provides steps and strategies for the digital advertising opportunity. Retargeting and Remarketing are often considered to be the same thing. they aren’t. Retargeting is the practice of sending many different advertising offers, calls to action, copy, etc. to the same visitor. Remarketing is the practice of sending the same advertisement to the visitor over and over again. Retargeting is the best approach to use if the key-performance expectation is to drive direct response conversions such as downloading a whitepaper report, registering for an email list, purchasing a product or service, and so-on. Remarketing is best used for branding where the frequency of the advertising is measured by the lift to the website’s ‘Direct’ traffic in number of sessions gained. It is easy to understand that remarketing is simple since it requires the least amount of strategy and preparation. While retargeting is the more sophisticated of the two processes.

Remarketing optimization:

The first step requires a lot of early emphasis on testing (A/Bn and Multivariate). Through statistically designed experiments using Optimizely.com or Google Analytics the advertiser tests ads to identify the optimal brand message.

Once the advertisement that drives the desired increase to ‘Direct’ traffic sessions is found then the remarketing campaign should begin.

A remarketing pixel is placed on every page of the advertiser website to maximize the opportunity to deliver the ads to the maximum number of site visitors.

Retargeting optimization:

Segment the audience to create relevant ads based on their interests and matched to specific products and services. One of the most powerful aspects of retargeting is the ability to personalize the advertisers retargeting ads based on the products and services a person is interested in. Tailoring the ads based on the web pages they visit and how they interact with the advertiser’s site will make them more likely to click-through and convert. For example, someone who visits the pricing page is going to be ready to purchase sooner than someone who has just visited their blog.

Consider this simple 4-objective strategy as a starting point to the drill down from and to help identify the optimal retargeting strategy for the advertiser.

A visit to the homepage only, the retargeting ads should be focused on highlighting the business to keep top-of-mind advantage in the eyes of this bounced traffic. These ads will be the most general, and the goal should be generating awareness and driving them to an optimized landing page.

A visit to service/product pages, this means they’re starting to consider making a purchase. These ads should be tailored around the specific products or product categories they were looking at. This will create excitement (and combined with a great feature-benefit, or offer) it will entice them to come back to the advertiser’s website.

A visit to read the advertiser’s blog, they’re trying to make a decision about whether the company will meet their needs. This type of retargeting ad needs to feature a strong offer in the call-to-action, something like a free 30 day returns, or one-on-one demo. The purpose of this ad is to ensure they have all of the product information necessary to make a purchase. The landing page for this advertisement must provide the benefit of purchasing from this advertiser.

A download of content or register for more information, this visitor will purchase through an email nurturing campaign. A well developed and systematic nurturing campaign that entices the visitor to engage and interact through a series of emails each with additional content and customer case studies. Show them how they will benefit from using the advertiser’s service/products.

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2.) Add a conversion pixel to stop advertising to (and wasting money on) people who have already purchased or signed up. Chances are the advertiser already has a drip-marketing campaign in place that is designed to retain and resell to existing customers. The last thing you want to do after someone has converted is continue to retarget them with the same offer. It’s like when you give money to one of those street charity people and then you turn the corner and there’s another one. Pretty soon you’re having to cross the road to avoid them because you’re sick of saying “I’ve already given you money!”

By adding a conversion (burn) pixel to the post-conversion page (thank you page) the advertiser can either stop or change the ads that consumer is shown.For example, if a visitor downloads an ebook from the advertiser, invite them to join a webinar on the same topic. Or, if they’re already a customer, show them offers for complementary products to cross-sell them, and offer them maintenance packages or upgrades.

A conversion pixel will not only keep the advertiser’s customers happy but will also save the advertiser money they can allocate to more productive digital advertising needs. After all, what’s the point in showing a retargeting ad that contains an offer someone has already converted on?

3.) Limit the Frequency to avoid annoying potential customers. In order to achieve the highest conversion-rate on your retargeting ad you need to show it the right amount of times. But what is that magical number? This is something you need to test (Optimizely.com or Google Analytics) to be certain but as a general rule most people will behave in a similar fashion based on where they are in the buying cycle. As defined by the Analytics and Data Science attribution models.

Consider this strategy while helping the advertiser thinking about how often to show retargeting ads:

Overexposure will generally result in decreased campaign performance because of banner blindness (where consumers ignore ads) and can result in a negative association with the advertiser. Watch for peak conversion performance and drop off points.

Showing ads approximately 17-20 times per month will usually result in optimal performance for most verticals.

The number of ads to show will vary based on what the advertiser provides, who shops for those items and how long the potential customer will be receptive to the ads. It will take experimentation, trial and error to find the optimized frequency. For example, selling clothing for consumers versus software for businesses you’ll want to change the frequency the ads are shown. This is something the advertiser will have to play around with to find the right number for each service/product.

4.) Keep the advertiser’s ads fresh and exciting to encourage clicks. Just because someone hasn’t converted on the retargeting ad doesn’t mean they’re not going to. There’s a big chance that the offer or benefit in the ad just didn’t resonate with them.

If someone doesn’t convert on the retargeting ad after the first 10 days, chances are they’re not going to convert on the 30th either. Plus, the longer it’s been since the last time they’ve visited your website, the less likely it is that they will be interested. See the conversion models from Analytics and Data Science to identify conversion length and path analysis.

The best way to convert people who have been retargeted for a while is to change up the ads. When the advertiser changes the benefit, offer or combination of the two the ads will be fresh and they’ll stay top-of-mind in the consumer’s eyes.

Consider these ideas when consulting with the advertiser about keeping the advertising fresh.

Change the benefit: A benefit is something that the customer perceives as valuable and as something that will help them accomplish their goals or relieve their pain. For example, if you were the owner of a cleaning business and someone visited your website but left without sending in a request. The following are different benefits you could highlight in various ads:

Flexible times: “Come home to a fresh house every night – we clean while you’re at work!”

Making your life easy: “We clean so you have time to relax”

Giving you more time: Spend more time doing the things you love (not cleaning)

Change the offer: The offer needs to be compelling enough for someone to click it. If you have an irrelevant offer or an offer that isn’t worth their time, they’re not going to click it. Encourage people to visit your cleaning website (and convert):

Free Trial: “First clean is on us”

Discount: “20% off when you buy a cleaning package – this month only!”

Free product with purchase: “Free cleaning products when you purchase any cleaning package”

Many marketers and advertisers try to lure abandoned visitors back with coupons or discounts. This can be risky as some customers may deliberately abandon their carts to search for future discounts. When retargeting switch between showcasing benefits or offers to see which performs better for the advertiser. (Optimizely.com or Google Analytics)

Remind the advertiser that customers don’t always follow a linear buying pattern. Just because they’ve visited the website or downloaded the ebook, doesn’t mean they’re ready to convert. Giving them more information will assist them in their purchasing journey.

Programmatic marketing concept for retargeting and remarketing.

5.) Send every ad to a dedicated landing page using the UTM guidelines to enhance the opportunity to identify and test performance. Each retargeting ad needs to send traffic to a unique landing page that has the same look and feel of the ad that was clicked. When people click an advertisement the landing page confirms they have been directed to the right page. Make sure every landing page has a single call-to-action. Having a single call-to-action will make it easy for the visitor to focus on it and not get distracted by anything else and this will maximize conversions.

Ensure the advertiser understands the landing page is essentially an extension of the banner advertisement. They’ll want to provide the same messaging in the headline and call-to-action without over doing it with irrelevant information.

Never send advertising traffic to the home page of a website. There is no bigger waste of advertising spend than to waste traffic on the home page. Every ad requires a unique landing page with a relevant call-to-action.

Use a dedicated tracking UTM for each ad + landing page campaign.

If using pixel tracking, use a unique pixel for each ad + landing page campaign.

Never use the same tracking pixel or UTM for multiple ad + landing pages.

Conclusion

Retargeting is an easy and profitable way to increase an advertiser’s conversion-rate and ROAS so long as you know how to coach and consult with them for how to do it.

Send me examples of your best retargeting and remarketing campaigns and be automatically entered for your choice of either a free site audit or PPC audit for your advertiser.

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